The dust from the Titanoboa's transformation had barely settled when the Black Tiger decided it was his turn to escalate the situation.
Carik dropped to all fours. His body contorted, bones cracking and reshaping with sickening crunches, until the scarred man was gone. In his place stood a nightmare.
He was a massive black tiger, easily twice the size of a normal beast. But it wasn't his size that made the air turn ice-cold.
It was his eyes.
They weren't the dull, muddy yellow they had been a moment ago. They were glowing a vibrant, blood-curdling red.
Kael, standing in his two-legged form, felt his jaw drop.
"No way," he whispered.
Even Syris, currently a fifty-foot-long serpent, paused. His vertical pupils widened slightly in genuine shock.
Red eyes meant one thing in the Beast World: Feral Madness. It meant the beast had lost its mind, reduced to a drooling, mindless killing machine that attacked anything with a pulse.
Carik was drooling. But he wasn't mindless.
